Whenever I get a new Ikea catalog, I flip through it and always think “sure it looks amazing in these pictures, but how will it look in my dull house?”

Well, the marketing masters at Ikea have finally figured out how to get around my doubts. You can scan an item from the the Ikea catalog, let’s say a green couch and then hold up your phone where you would want the green couch to go, let’s say next to your yellow wall. Then look through your phone and you will see the green couch virtually up against the yellow wall. You will now have realized that it probably isn’t a good idea to buy the green couch.

This was a pretty sweet use of direct mail marketing combined with augmented reality technology! The next step would be to allow you to instantly buy it in the app and then use a 3D printer to deliver the furniture item right into your home.

Checkout the Ikea trailer for this on youtube. What do you think of this strategy, will it work on you to buy more stuff from Ikea? Let me know in the comments.

Special thanks to Eric Lovett for telling me about this!